Introduction

In the thirteen preceding chapters we have presented the Story of the Conquest in selections from various native sources, arranged according to the chronological sequence of events. Now, as are capitulation, we offer another indigenous account. It describes all the major incidents of the Conquest in briefer form, but it also contains a considerable amount of material that cannot be found in other documents. Therefore it is not a mere summary but an important, independent narrative. As such, it inevitably introduces a number of discrepancies, both with the texts we have presented earlier and with the Spanish chronicles of Bernal Diaz and others.

This account was written in Nahuatl in 1528 by anonymous authors in Tlatelolco. Like several of the texts by Sahagun's native informants, it reflects the pride of the Tlatelolcas in their home quarter of the city. It is probably the oldest prose document of all those drawn upon in this book. The original is now in the National Library in Paris, where it forms part of Unos analeshistoricos de la nacion mexicana-the so-called Manuscript.